Comcast Plans to Offer Live TV Streaming on Tablets

Company to also enable on-demand content for iPad and Android later this year

Comcast will announce on Wednesday plans to offer its customers the ability to stream live television and on-demand content on their iPads and Android-powered tablets.

Brian Roberts, the company’s chairman and chief executive, is expected to make the announcement at Citi's Global Entertainment Media & Telecommunications Conference in Phoenix.

The live-streaming will be available later this year for Comcast customers in their homes – meaning you’re a Comcast cable customer, your tablets become additional televisions. ("Honey, the game's on — go watch your 'Real Housewives' on your iPad!")

Comcast also announced plans to roll out its new “play now” feature for the Xfinity TV iPad app, which will allow customers with the Apple tablet to watch 3,000 hours of on-demand content anywhere there is a wireless connection.

Comcast’s Xfinity TV app already functions as a television guide and remote control, allowing customers to can change TV channels, browse listings and program their DVRs.

And the company just launched a new feature that allows their PCs to do the same thing, transforming laptops or desktop computers into Comcast remote controls.

“Live streaming and the play now feature on our Xfinity TV app are two important pieces of our strategy to deliver any content to any device, any time,” Roberts is expected to say. “Comcast has a series of upcoming online enhancements and app releases that are part of a much larger effort to reinvent how customers interact with their entertainment on TV, online and on mobile devices.”

Comcast rolled out its Xfinity on-demand service in December 2009, and Roberts first previewed the Xfinity app's remote-control features last May.

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